Snake Lake

by Jeff Greenwald

  As she snapped photos, Grace saw a familiar face. Jason Craig, the Newsweek stringer, was right beside her. She grinned. “Nice party, hunh?”

  “It’s sure to piss off their parents,” he replied. They laughed together, enjoying the surreal absurdity of their vocation. Jason ducked away, angling for a silhouette shot, and his spot was immediately filled by a burly, red-haired man. A press badge linking him to a Norwegian news organization was pinned to his shirt. They exchanged a quick greeting, the brisk nod of professionals facing the consummate test of their skills.

  Up the road, the soldiers were regrouping. Grace turned her attention back to the statue. A handsome teenager wearing a pink shirt and a broad black sash climbed onto the pedestal, holding two flags—representing the Congress and Communist parties—between his teeth. He stepped on King Mahendra’s foot and boosted himself up high enough to grab for the Royal Scepter. It pulled out with ease, and he jammed the rebellious flags into the hole in Mahendra’s bronze right hand. He faced the cheering crowd, holding the scepter aloft.

  Grace had time to take a single photograph before the boy’s head exploded, showering bits of brain and skull onto everyone nearby.

  There was an immeasurable moment of transcendental silence. Then it shattered like a cathedral window, and the universe was a mosaic of gunfire, screaming, and utter, empty terror.

  Grace ran without stopping, clawing pieces of flesh and bone off her face and hair and shirt. Her cameras smacked against her chest. She could see nothing but the endless tunnel of the street in front of her: Jamal. The dull crack of gunfire seemed to be coming from all directions.

  Bodies lay bleeding in the streets, some with horrific wounds. She tripped over a trampled, wheezing dog. Another Westerner, the red-haired Norwegian, ran alongside her for a few seconds, vanishing as suddenly as he had appeared. At any moment, she might discover what it felt like to be shot. She imagined a single, lightninglike blow; her whole life flying across her vision; the pavement rushing toward her face; a cold and fading ache.

  At the end of Jamal Grace veered left, glancing up Kantipath toward the Yellow Pagoda Hotel. Soldiers were kneeling in the road in front of the British Council, their rifles raised, picking off demonstrators as they fled randomly through the streets. She ran south, zigzagging toward the familiar landmark of Bir Hospital. Her breath wheezed in her throat. Dry-mouthed and panicked, she vaulted the low garden fence and lunged through the swinging doors of the emergency room, hitting the far wall so hard that it knocked the wind out of her and she fell to her knees.

  HER FIRST THOUGHT, as she recovered her senses, was that she’d landed in one of the hideous hell realms described in the ancient Buddhist texts. A choir of agonized cries echoed all around her, punctuated by hoarse commands and the rhythmic, withering screams of wounded children. The sharp smell of disinfectant penetrated the corridor, barely masking the stench of sweat, shit, and urine.

  Packs of Nepali men and women were shoving through the doors and rushing down the hallway, carrying dead and wounded civilians in from the streets on makeshift stretchers. Most of the victims were children: a teenager with a crater in his chest, a schoolgirl with her leg blown off. There were no more rooms; the casualties were being arrayed in long rows in the corridor, their bloodstained clothes the only insulation between their bodies and the cold and filthy floor. Emaciated pariah dogs, smelling the fresh blood, had snuck in from the shady alleys of Indrachowk to lick at the crimson tiles.

  Grace pressed herself against the wall in shock. A wave of nausea threatened to overwhelm her. After a moment it receded, and she remembered why she was here. She was a witness: the only journalist on the scene. If the world was to know what had happened here today, she’d better start doing her job.

  Her lens caps had disappeared in the fray. She wiped the dried blood off her UV filters and got to work. She was kneeling in the bloody corridor, photographing the rows of prone bodies, when a doctor in a blood-splattered white coat hurried toward her from down the hall.

  “You! Miss! Tapai lai kasto chha?”

  “I’m all right,” Grace called back. “I’m fine!”

  “Then for God’s sake help us!” She recognized the doctor from somewhere. UNICEF? Peace Corps? No, the strike at the Teaching Hospital, two months ago. This was Mishra, the man who’d organized it all. Excellent! She changed her aperture as he knelt down to lift a wounded woman beneath her knees. The motor drive whirred efficiently. “What are you doing?”

  Mishra appeared stunned. “Put that down! Take her shoulders! We have to get this person to surgery.”

  Grace should not have hesitated; she should have refused Mishra and continued fiercely with her own work. It was as important as his. The pictures she was taking were critical documents, and a part of Nepal’s history. She was about to tell Mishra that she, too, had urgent skills; that people were relying on her as much as they were relying on him.

  But that would be a lie. Teenage girls, rickshaw drivers and students, mothers and children were lying on all sides of her, bleeding to death as she took their photos. It was one thing to be in a refugee camp or war zone, where suffering became an abstraction. These were people she knew, in a place she loved.

  “I’ll help you,” she said.

  He nodded at her gear. “Your cameras will get ruined. Put them in my office, at the end of the hall.” Mishra pointed. “Hurry.”

  Grace craned her neck. She wanted her gear in sight. “Is there anywhere else?”

  The woman in Mishra’s arms vomited blood and her head lolled to the side.

  “Move! People are dying while we think about these bloody cameras!”

  She ran off guiltily. Mishra’s office seemed official enough, and reasonably secure. The drawers were crammed with files. She loaded a fresh roll of color film into her point-and-shoot Minolta before slipping the strap around her neck. Then she wrapped her cameras in her photographer’s vest, and covered the bundle with Mishra’s sports jacket. She closed his door and jogged back down the hall.

  Grace was squeamish about hospitals; she had once fainted while giving blood. Somehow, this was different. A hard-wired survival instinct had kicked in, vaulting her into a realm of dispassionate duty. She and Mishra moved the woman onto an empty table in the madhouse operating room, then returned to the corridor for a porter with a shattered collarbone. When he’d been relocated they returned for the next casualty. Grace sucked in her breath: It was the red-haired Norwegian who’d run beside her down Jamal. He’d been wounded through the neck, and his blood flowed onto the hallway floor. Mishra pronounced him dead on sight.

  She rifled through his money belt for some identification. A spent cartridge slipped from his shirt pocket and bounced once on the floor, where it rolled in a tight semicircle. He had intended it, no doubt, as a souvenir. Mishra picked it up with two fingers.

  “Bastards,” he hissed. “These are hollow-point bullets. They expand on impact, which is why the wounds are so hard to treat. They are shooting to kill, not to wound.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Look at him.” Mishra tilted his chin at the corpse. “Neck, chest, and head wounds. They’re aiming for the heart, not the legs.”

  THE CASUALTIES KEPT coming in. By now the corridor was full, and there was no more room in surgery. In a desperate bid at triage Mishra began treating victims in the hallway, recruiting bystanders to assist him as he sliced away torn and bloodied clothing, meted out tetanus shots, and sutured wounds.

  There was a brief, strange lull as a small phalanx of soldiers muscled into the lobby. They made their way grimly back to the surgery room. For a panicked instant, Grace thought they’d come for her. But they surveyed the bodies and shouted at Mishra. He shouted back, silencing them. It seemed they were looking for someone; they moved from room to room, their commander barking orders until his voice was lost against the background din.

  Grace was handed a kettle of iodized water and told to “prep for the surgeon,” what
ever that meant. She made her way between the victims, loosening their clothing, offering words of encouragement, and sponging grime and blood away from the places where stitches would go.

  It was nasty work. Within minutes she was covered with blood. Her shirt and pants were soaked through. Flies lit in her hair, on her face, on the unused Minolta, and on the backs of her hands. She looked, she imagined, like a casualty herself. She shocked herself with the impious notion that she should save these clothes. The outfit would be great for Halloween: the photojournalist from hell.

  The idea was funny and distracting, but when she finally stood up and saw her reflection in the hospital’s glass door, something inside of her gave, and she nearly passed out. Death was all over her, like a second skin. She tore off her mask and scrubs, throwing them into the nearest corner. They were set upon by dogs. For an unmeasured moment she stood still, panting in the middle of the crimson corridor in her jeans and a sweat-stained bra, her sleek hair streaked with blood: a vision of Durga among the dead.

  There was shouting, much commotion, and the doors to the emergency room burst open. The entire area was instantly awash in brilliant light. It was the CNN news crew; Grace had spoken to them in Patan, less than a week ago. The camera panned the scene, jerking to a stop when it found the half-naked, blood-spattered white girl who reigned over the carnage like a feral homecoming queen. The correspondent looked at her, too startled to comment, and tilted his head on the brink of recognition.

  Grace stood unmoving, a primal sense of danger tickling the vertebrae of her neck. Look away. But the moment passed. She managed a wan smile.

  “Hi, Mom,” she muttered. Then she felt a hand on her arm, and Mishra led her away.

  “Never mind,” he said. “Your mother will never see. They will edit you from the broadcast. And even if they do not, there is no need to worry. Everyone will understand.”

  “Understand what?” She hadn’t a clue what he was saying.

  Mishra’s thin smile appeared completely out of place in the floodlit, blood-mottled hall. “That you are just another Westerner who has lost her shirt in the East.”

  Grace stared at him for a few seconds, then began to laugh. She found she couldn’t stop.

  “You had better go now, I think.” Mishra took the blackened sponge out of her hand and wiped it gently across her stinging cheeks. Pink rivulets ran down her neck. “Try to get home and wash up. You can wear the clean shirt hanging in my office.”

  Grace calmed down. “What about the soldiers? The shooting?”

  “Over. Finished. They have called a curfew, but you have until seven to get home. It is nearly six.” He took her hand. “Please, go. You have helped us so much. You may come tomorrow and take some pictures. Thank you. Really. Thank you from all of Nepal.”

  She nodded and, quite spontaneously, embraced him. Mishra laughed and self-consciously squeezed her exposed body, patting her rhythmically on the back.

  The television crew had moved on, and the fever pitch of activity resumed as Grace made her way down the crowded hall. The stench of ammonia, striking her anew, was dizzying. There was less moaning than before; most of the wounded civilians lining the corridor were by now either stabilized or quietly dying. She stared straight ahead as she approached Mishra’s office. Her only desire was to cover her body, return home, and sleep.

  Grace found Mishra’s shirt, hanging on a twisted hook behind the door. She removed a Cross pen from the pocket and set it on his desk. And then her whole spirit seemed to drop through her feet, through the floor, to the bottom of the Earth.

  Her vest and cameras were gone. The bastards had gotten them, after all.

  GRACE CARRIED OUR plates to the sink.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “It’s okay. It actually is,” she answered. “Maybe it’s sour grapes. But I decided that if I was going to take something home, I’d rather it was knowing I’d saved a kid’s life than having great pictures of someone’s head being blown off.”

  “Well, that’s exactly what we were talking about after Shivaratri. And you followed through. I think what you did was amazing,” I said. “I’m proud of you.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” What did I mean? I walked up behind her and put my hands on her shoulders. “I love you,” I said.

  The words hung suspended. “Really?” Grace turned on the faucet and squirted detergent into the sink. “I’ll believe that,” she said, “if we’re waking up together a month from now.”

  32

  Word of Mouth

  LARRY PRINCE WAS one of the World’s Most Difficult People. He’d lived in Nepal more than half of his thirty-seven years, moving to Kathmandu as a vagabond teenager. Those were the days of the Cowboy Raj, the epoch of rickshaws and hashish, just before Birendra’s reign. Prince had led treks into perilous mountain sanctuaries, and was one of the first photographers to visit Tibet after the Chinese opened the occupied country to foreigners. He’d seen death and magic up close. Such distinctions might have been envied and admired, if he didn’t wear them like a feathered hat. Pushy and self-promoting, he kept a running record of favors delivered and favors received.

  So why did I love this guy?

  “Because I’m brilliant, hilarious, and singularly well informed,” he reminded me over lunch at his favorite Thamel pizzeria. “Not to mention well connected. And I’m also quite generous—to my friends. But don’t cross me. Please. Because I’m quite capable of making your life here exceedingly difficult, if not impossible.” He signaled our waiter and demanded a bowl of crushed chili flakes. “Do you happen to remember—it was exactly seven months ago—when Brian Leary, that stringer for Gourmet, was hauled out of his flat and given forty-eight hours to quit the kingdom?”

  “I do.” I certainly remembered wondering what a writer for Gourmet was doing in Nepal.

  “Mmm hmm. Well, I trust you won’t repeat this. The week before he left, Mr. Leary had made an indiscreet comment to the American ambassador about my brief—very brief—liaison with the vice-consul’s cook. As a result, I was not invited to Thanksgiving dinner at the embassy. And as a result of that, I was not able to confirm an arrangement with a certain Marine Corps helicopter pilot, who had agreed to fly me up the Arun River for some shots of the new dam project. As a result of that, I had a little chat with my friends at Police Headquarters. And as a result of that—oh my!—poor Mr. Leary suddenly found himself persona non grata in Nepal.

  “On the other hand, of course, there are,” he lowered his eyelids, “conservatively , two dozen people who wouldn’t even be in Nepal right now, had I not interceded on their behalf. So you see, I’m not all-powerful. But I do have some influence. Limited, but effective. Fortunately, I happen to like you.”

  Some people despised Prince so heartily they couldn’t be in the same room with him. I found him endearing. His behavior was clearly an act: a carapace protecting a tender core. I knew how to humor him, but wasn’t afraid to call his bluff. This afternoon, though, he had me over a barrel. During my week of research I’d been fishing for details, dusting for the fingerprints that would mark this revolution as peculiarly Nepali. And no one else (no other English speaker, at least) followed local politics as closely as he. So I sat patiently across the table, notebook in hand, as he showed me a selection of his photos.

  There were more than a hundred images, all taken during the first ten days of April. Prince had been everywhere. It seemed he’d performed supernatural feats: hovering in the air above seething mobs, filtering through army roadblocks, impervious to bullets or lathi charges. This was the single quality that, despite his social retardation, saved him from complete ostracism : He was a first-rate photojournalist.

  “Amazing work,” I said. “You’ve produced one of the most important documents in this country’s history.”

  “Thank you. I happen to agree.”

  “I think the hardest thing for me to believe is that, after so many months of
waffling, the opposition leaders finally figured it out.”

  Prince stared at me, a cartoon figure of wide-eyed disbelief. “You don’t think for a minute that April 6 was planned, do you?” A piece of fuzz, some kind of airborne seed, clung to his bearded chin. “Oh no. No, my friend. The whole thing happened purely by accident. Incredible, but true.”

  “How can that be?”

  “I’ll tell you exactly how: on one condition.”

  I leaned forward to flick away the fuzz puff. “What might that be?”

  “You have to credit me.”

  “Sure. What would you like me to call you? ‘Pizza gourmand’?”

  “You can write, ‘Larry Prince, longtime Nepal resident and one of South Asia’s foremost photojournalists.’ That’s concise. Do we have a deal?”

  “Please continue.”

  “Yes or no?” He refilled my beer.

  “More or less. Now tell me your story.”

  “Very well. First of all, do you remember reading that a couple of days before the April 6 Massacre—on April 2, in fact—there were huge demonstrations in Kirtipur and Patan?” I did. “The papers said there were thirty thousand people in Patan, but there were easily twice as many. I was there for Asiaweek. It was incredible; much more moving and energetic than anything I’d witnessed in Kathmandu. Now, up until then the Palace—and by that I mean the king himself—had been hearing about the demonstrations. But he hadn’t actually seen any of them. So the home minister dispatched a helicopter to take videos of the crowds and bring them back to show the king. Are you following me so far?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good! So. The helicopter flew off. A Royal Nepal Army colonel spent a good hour collecting footage of the crowd. They were hovering close to the ground; people could easily see what they were up to. Finally, they left. Buzzed off. But there was one small problem with their strategy: a problem that nobody had even considered, much less taken into account.” Prince paused.